1. Elizabethan Settlement (1559):

1. Key in 1558 is the need to restore the royal supremacy in order to replace Catholic bishops and so enable Elizabeth’s coronation, not spontaneous Protestantism. Another key is the fate of the ex-religious property, the ex-monastic lands that the purchasers did not wish to return to the Church.
2. Was Elizabeth a Protestant? Can we identify the queen’s own view of her royal supremacy? cf. High Commission + Cawdrey’s Case (1592) - Cited Act of Appeals word for word on “empire” and imperial “crown” just as Henry VIII was still alive!
   • As under Henry VIII “imperial Crown” meaning monarch is head of the Church without reference to Parliament = the thesis
     “king” or “queen-in-Parliament” = the counter-thesis!
3. Elizabeth disliked tub-thumping Protestantism and clerical marriage. Does this mean the Elizabethan regime was established on false premisses? Or was she dissembling for political reasons?
4. Cecil, Leicester and Walsingham are far more Protestant than Elizabeth. Cecil, in particular, has links with Parliament and puritanism, and with the Protestants in Scotland. He is out to create Protestant British Isles if he can, and to destroy Mary Queen of Scots.
5. Pressure from Parliament and issue of “popularity” linked – dislike of divine-right monarchy also means dislike of the royal supremacy and enforcement of conformity by a High Commission or Star Chamber.

2. Elizabethan Reformation:

1. Settlement was Reformation from above, but Protestant evangelism was Reformation from below:  itinerant preachers civic sermons, prophesyings, “combination lectures”, exercises and puritan “fasts” etc. All this in Patrick Collinson’s book, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement.  
   • The evangelical campaign partly unofficial and even extra-legal. Not until 1580s that sufficient Protestant graduates turned out by universities, and Marian clergy in post until 1590s.
2. Catholicism is tenacious but more so is inertia:
   • Not clear that Catholics want to spend money to restore their Church even in Mary’s reign. Also most Catholics loyal to the Crown, see P. J. Holmes.
   • Elizabeth’s own emphasis is conformity NOT ANGLICANISM (The word “Anglicanism” not yet invented)

3. Puritanism - what does it mean?

1. Terminology is central. The official aim is to secure conformity, and dissenting positions are indexed in relation to this. Puritanism means further reformation of the Church on Genevan or fully-reformed lines, and implies the Elizabeth Settlement is “but halfly reformed”.
2. Disputes not about doctrine (there is, more or less, a Calvinist consensus over theology in Elizabeth’s reign). Even Archbishop Whitgift was a Calvinist in theology.
3. Disputes are about external things (popish ceremonies and clerical vestments).
   NB adiaphora or “things indifferent” are meant to be what they say - indifferent:  but there are rival interpretations of “things indifferent”, e.g. Elizabeth’s, who wanted them to be enforced.
4. Thomas Cartwright leads the presbyterian campaign in and after 1572: its origins lie in the Vestiarian controversy of the 1560s – dispute after 1571 moves on from ceremonies and clerical dress and centres on the role of the civil magistrate in the church and interpretation of scripture.
5. Presbyterians are relatively unimportant in social history (Elton) but crucial in political thought (Pocock, Collinson), because:
   1. they argue for the separation of church and state (i.e., the queen or civil magistrate cannot be head of church), and they seek to expand the definition of the “ecclesiastical”  sphere to include church discipline as well as doctrine
   2. presbyterianism is elective:  close to aristocratic conciliarism
   3. threat of populism and “democracy”;  implies equality among ministers and the election by each congregation of the persons responsible for teaching and discipline; denies the model of the godly prince and royal supremacy; is elective, i.e. close to populism or conciliarism and even resistance theory
   4. threat (in Scotland) to bishops, whom the presbyterians want to abolish
   5. Irony is that even if Burghley and Leicester support the aims of “puritanism”/”conciliar” government, they can’t endorse this, because until at least c.1590 the people would have elected Catholics! What the ordinary people wanted was not sermons and Protestant doctrine, but the sense of community they had enjoyed through church ritual in the pre-Henrician era.
6. Danger is that presbyterianism provokes jure divino defence of monarchy and episcopacy in reply: Whitgift 1583 + Bancroft.
7. Also provokes Elizabeth’s  “swing to the right” after 1587. New emphasis in 1590s is on bishops, authority, order and decency, importance of sacraments, and role of clergy as separate societas with separate legal system under the authority of the “supreme governor”: i.e. proto-Laudian/proto-Arminian agenda, and this is the true beginning of “Anglicanism” as defined by Richard Cosin, Lancelot Andrewes, and (to a lesser extent) Richard Hooker.

4. Catholics and Recusants

1. The Settlement of 1559 actually contains exceptions for private chapels (nobility) allowing services in Latin, so that for much of Elizabeth’s reign masses were covertly held there. Minus is it compromises the Settlement, plus is it keeps powerful people happy.
2. Oath of supremacy required for public office, which means Catholics excluded from Parliament and the local magistracy. England becomes a confessional state. Danger is the Catholics might plot to change the regime, e.g. in favour of Mary Queen of Scots.
3. Regnans in Excelsis (1570) the turning point: when the Pope approves the deposition of Elizabeth, Catholicism is tainted with treason. Now the rule of thumb is that a Catholic is a traitor, and this turns  Catholics into enemies of the state whether they are or not.
4. Parliament, overwhelmingly Protestant, passes new and draconian Treason Act (1571) based largely on Cromwell’s Treason Act of 1534. Parliament contains the Catholic threat in the short term, but in the longer term the legislation is damaging, because it has no place for Catholic loyalism, i.e. you could be a Catholic in conscience, but still loyal to the Queen.
5. Further extension of treason act in 1581 to cover missionary priests, notably Jesuits.
6. Church attendance enforced vigorously after 1571. Recusancy fines enforced. But Elizabeth does not expect “confessional” allegiance (meaning taking Communion) – only political conformity to 1559 Settlement (i.e. Church attendance).
7. Flight of Mary Queen of Scots to England (1568), and after 1585 Leicester’s intervention in the Netherlands and the outbreak of war against Spain increase the pressure on Catholics dramatically, and have more effect than  Protestant evangelism.
8. Only in the 1590s and 1600s, after the defeat of the 1588 Armada and execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1587), does it become possible to argue that loyal Catholics (i.e. those who support Elizabeth, but wish to hear mass for reasons of conscience) should be left alone. It’s in the 1590s that Thomas More starts to become a hero of Catholic loyalism: he was, say Catholic loyalists, Henry VIII’s “good servant”, even if he put religion ahead of the king in matters of conscience. All this comes to focus on the Jesuit missionaries, whom many Catholics regard as the problem not the solution to the English situation, because they are the obstacle to a settlement with the regime.